B2B Social Media Marketing Tips for 2017

In recent times, it has become vital for businesses to promote themselves on Social Media. The online world is seen as a powerful tool for marketing and advertisement. The recognition of B2B social media marketing is spreading like wildfire around the globe. As per the recent report of CMI, the B2B has increasingly recognized social media as a crucial platform for the businesses to build their relationship with its customer and consumers. The increasing use of social media opens doors for the organization to promote themselves on social media. It is estimated that around 66% businesses now have a separate social media team and it is expecting to increase even further shortly. But,the majority of B2B social media marketers do not have social media effectively as their marketing tool.

It is a fact that B2B social media marketing is way different from the traditional B2B marketing and that many B2B companies have stated that being on social media is not enough for the survival.

It is very critical for a B2B social media marketing that you build strong social media content, which reflects the strengths of your business and increases the brand reputation.

It is now globally recognized that social media is growing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and so on; they are excellent sources of organic growth of the business. Merely a simple account on social media does not enhance your market share, as you would have to be more interactive with the customers and the content which is to be presented in such a manner which enforces the client and consumers to interact with the brand.

Following are the tips for B2B social media marketing that will help the organization in designing their B2B social media marketing strategy for 2017:

A separate plan for each social media channel:

Some companies make this blunder of blindly entering the social media marketing without a formal and detailed plan. Remember the famous slogan “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

You should be able to answer the questions like “why are you on social media? Or what class of audience you are trying to attract? There should be a formal plan in writing which can be accessed by you and your team in case you need them.

If you are a newcomer in the social media marketing, keep restricting your number of active social media channels to three or less. Many small businesses are trying to manage five or six social media sites which often fail to achieve the targets.

Post consistently:

In order to run an effective social media marketing strategy, it is crucial that you post consistently. Posting one post per day and one tweet will not change the situation. Some of the social media channels like Instagram and Snapchat do not move so frequently as opposed to Facebook and Twitter.

Principles that should be kept in mind while planning your social media marketing plan:

The type of content you are planning to make public.

Monitor the social media outreach publishing schedule.

How regularly you are going to post on each social media.

One fact that should be kept in mind is that your followers and customers belong to different class, age group, and various other critical groups. If you are not posting content in line with the expectation of clients soon, they will quickly move on to another brand. Posting always does not mean to publish inappropriate or unimportant content; You should be very sensitive to the content that is being posted and it should not impair the rituals and beliefs of anyone in any manner.

Be selective about what you publish:

A good B2B social media marketing is critical to the quality of its posts. Although the posts and content are essential, however quality might be more important. Your content must be publish ed infrequent reasonable intervals but also should be valuable to the people you want to attract.

Effective social media marketing includes regular feedbacks from the followers and if you don’t take into account the legitimate claims of stakeholders, then you are not going to survive in the industry. Just posting all day will not give you any benefit if the followers are expecting something different.

Exploit a social media management tool:

If you are publishing via a native stage for social media channels, you are killing your precious time. Social media management tools will greatly help you in this regard. Social media management tools have the following advantages:

They can publish content at the same time on various channels.

They can assist you in maintaining a schedule for posts in advance.

Increase your liaison with your team.

They have a unique feature called Single dashboard. With the help of single panel you can manage your social media feeds on a single tab rather than log into five different sites. It can make your social media marketing more comfortable and straightforward.

They assist you in monitoring the effectiveness of your social media marketing campaign.

There are many other benefits of social media management tools. Managers can run social media campaign from their smartphones, but as a business, you should spend your time in such a manner which can prove to be more beneficial and result oriented.

Post more images:

Some recent researches show that images attract people rather than mere words or digits.

The evidence of this research is Instagram, which has seen the largest engagement on social media.

However, selecting images to publish on social media seems to be easy but in reality, it takes quite a time to release but, posted images should not be controversial and does not injure the expectations of the followers.

A/B Test:

A/B Test is a valuable tool, and many social media marketers use it in their work, but many of the small players are not even aware of it. A/B testing is also called as split testing, particularly it is the usage of many headlines for the same content to conclude which headline award better response.

A/B Testing in B2B social media marketing plays a vital role because the reaction of followers will be different if it presents under different headlines. One of the main reasons for the failure of the post is the inappropriate headlines because a person interprets and judges the whole post by its headline.

Search Engine Optimization:

It is another critical factor for the brand awareness and social marketing;effective e-marketing is incomplete without this factor. Search engine optimization means that whenever a search engine visitor visits the engine, your name should appear in the original pages. Most of the people just visit the links which appear on the original pages and they do not even bother to look at other pages. Search engine ranking increases as the number of visits on the website increases. It also increases due to the content published on the social media channels.

Diversification:

The followers of the brand are not similarly be related to each other, and all of them are something which is in line with their expectation and demand. An efficient and proactive B2B social media marketing is one which takes into account and considers the expectations of each class of stakeholders. For this purpose, it is crucial to select a team which can avoid group thinking and is capable of considering conflicting demands and claims of stakeholders.

Measure and Analysis:

It is vital for the B2B social marketing that the marketer analyzes the performance and effectiveness of social marketing. It is estimated that almost 40% of people promote their performance.

It should be carefully assessed that how many likes, comments, mentions, views and retweetshave been achieved on Instagram, Facebook, Google plus, and twitter. These mentioned factors should be weekly, monthly and annually.

Proper Allocation of Resources:

Resources should be allocated and if you are not spend appropriate level of money, then you would get nothing. In the technological world, it might be unfair to invest more in conventional instead of social media marketing; some businesses might be reluctant to spend a higher proportion of allocated budget in social media which might prove to be hazardous for the firm. Proper planning in the area of B2B social media marketing may allow an entity to enjoy high growth in revenues and profits.

Interaction with Stakeholders:

The key features of social media are that it enables the business to maintain a healthy relationship with its customers and it is the best way of two-way communication nowadays.

Businesses can get feedback easily with the help of social marketing that allows entities to develop their future strategies which fulfill the needs and wants of its valuable customers.

Continuous growth in market share is only possible if the company provides goods or services which aim to meet all the demands of its customer. If this is not done soon, then in that case the business will face a decline in customer base.

Conducting surveys on social media could further help you to communicate with your existing and potential customers and may further assist you in designing the strategies which take full consideration of the customers.

If you could give attention to their clients and take their views when deciding new strategy,then in that case they will feel more comfortable to do business with you.

Analyze the competitors:

By analyzing the competitors, the social media marketer can adopt various positive aspects. For example, if you are not getting response which you are expecting and your competitor is achieving tremendous response, then you should analyze what your competitor is doing right. You should analyze the content, images, timing, on which social media site the competitor is getting the highest response and what class of people is following him.

It will provide a fleeting thought about the negative aspects of your social media marketing campaign. Analyzing the competitor does not necessarily mean that you just copy your competitor; you should be able to present yourself different from your competitor. If you just impersonate your competitor, it will result in loss of credibility. B2B social media marketing should be unique from the competitors but the structure of its activities can be copied however, it should be presented in a different way. Try to analyze the problem with your B2B social marketing strategy and evaluate in which area you lack and whether your content is upto the mark or not.

Force to follow:

The B2B social media marketing should be presented to the customers in such a manner that could enforce them to follow your organization. Just increase the number of followers onsocial media is not your ultimate purpose, as the ultimate goals of social media marketing is to increase the revenue. Social media marketing should be managed in such a way that it could allow new customers to try your goods and services at least and would help the organization to retain and motivate its current customer to try more products and services. There is always a trend in every society by exploiting that area which triggers customers to share their thoughts.

Social and Ethical Considerations:

An entity should present itself as a responsible organization for the community through B2B social marketing. Social media is the best modern way to give your contribution towards the environment in which your entity operates. Many customers just not want the company to be loyal to clients, but also want the company to be socially responsible. Businesses that publicize their contribution towards the society witness a rapid growth in their turnover. For example, if you are a vehicle manufacturing organization and are producing vehicles which are least dangerous for the environment and have least carbon emission, then you could present yourself on social media to encourage customers to buy the cars of your company.

Relevant Expertise:

The B2B social marketing would help to identify your skills and can play a vital role in the future growth of the organization. When a buyer wants to buy a particular good or service, then he will try to get the best available good or service, and they consider purchasing from an expert, however, you should be very honest and social media marketing should not be misleading to the customer.

Not be so annoying:

Your Social media marketing should not be boring for the followers. It is a human psych that followers want something interesting to look,by considering that, you will be able to grow your business through social marketing.

However, excessive entertainment could result in the purpose not being achieved, therefore you should be very sensitive in this regard.

Target your Customers:

B2B social media marketing should be customer oriented. If you are promoting your products to an irrelevant class of clients, you will soon be eliminated from the market. However, you should try to reach as many customers as possible on the social media to give boost your potential customers. You should market through social media to the people who are not your target market, but could become your clients if they see something unique in your B2B social media marketing.

Strategic alliance with existing player:

If your brand is new in the market and the potential customer is not aware of you, then should have develop a partnership with the existing brand and promote your content on their social media channels. For example, if you are a new entrant to the food industry, then you can build a strategic partnership with existing beverages brand which promotes you along with their product on their social media means in exchange for some consideration. However, the big players may be reluctant to arrange a deal with the new player because if the customer is not satisfied with your product, it could also damage the reputation of your strategic partner. Moreover, it could impair your reputation if the result of your alliance partner fails to meet the expectations.

Competency:

If you hire incompetent staff, you would probably get nothing through B2B social media marketing, as you have to hire B2B social media professionals to run effective and efficient social media marketing. Skilled personals could help you greatly in the social marketing as they know the behavior of customers and the key risk factors of social media marketing.

Duration:

Every investment take sits time and does not start generating returns immediately. Same is the case for social media marketing;you will not get the results overnight.It takes time to reach the customers, and not all the followers will immediately trust your brand.Just give proper time, and other considerations to the social media and you will see the difference once you have brought your B2B social media marketing on the right path.

Not restricted to a single Social media medium:

If you want to increase the effectiveness of your social media marketing, you would have to reach out to the maximum followers on social media. This goal is not possible if you restrict your brand to a single social media site, as you have to be familiar with the all social media sites to capture the market share. Selection of social media site is also crucial to the success of your B2B social media marketing campaign, and if you are spending your time on the social media which is not relevant to your business, then you might survive to get the desired benefit.

Frequently asked questions:

Social media could help you in responding to the claims and expectations of the customers. If you publish the frequently asked questions (FAQS) on your social media page, it will enhance your reputation in the market as well as the increase in activity on your social media page which again automatically increase the search engine ranking of your brand. After sales service is always critical, publishing FAQs on social media is seen positively by the followers.

Arrange Contests:

If you want to increase the activity on social media, you should arrange the contest on your social media page or account, as it will encourage more followers to take part in this event. It might also develop some curiosity among the peoples to try your brand. Additionally, it will increase the brand awareness among the followers.

Promotional Deals:

Another way to increase the effectiveness of B2B social media marketing is to give promotions and deals to customers through social media channels. Exclusive discounts could also be offered to social media followers in order to attract.

Industry Dynamics:

Another crucial point to be noted is to understand the dynamics of the industry. If you are not aware of the industry dynamics and trends, you will lose your presence in a short period of time. Therefore, it is imperative to know what trend is emerging among the customers or what kind of services and products they want.

Avoidance of conflicts:

If you take an active part in conflicts on social media, you are probably committing suicide because of the followers now a day is more critical on social media rather than in real life. It would be beneficial for the organization to stay silent in situations which could affect it to achieve its ultimate goal.

Blogging:

It is avery useful techniqueto retain your professional customers by writing blogs regarding the industry and publishing more regarding the strengths of the organization for the client.

Alliance with Celebrities:

It is also a very effective marketing strategy, as one could sign a deal with them, and in return they will promote your business on their social media accounts. Celebrity has a great impact on our day to day lives. Some members of social media do not want to follow the business pages and that they only follow celebrities on social media, and through this,one could also reach that class of followers.